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jaisuus's review against another edition
challenging
tense
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
4.75
I see myself rereading this book soon! Even tho I didn’t find it as confusing as I was afraid of.. I think I maybe did not pick up everything.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror and Violence
notnicolebrewer's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
deborah1's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I would recommend making sure you keep the character list to hand as it can get quite confusing who everyone is, there are 20 characters who are all important in some way and I didn't know who they were when things happened to them.
busybri96's review against another edition
4.0
4.5 Stars. This is a slow paced mystery that kept me engaged until the last page. Gideon is a thoroughly lovable idiot with and a distinct voice that I can still hear, months after finishing the book. Sapphic main characters that aren't in romance books are a little hard to come by and this is a real treat of a story.
becksamyf's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
5.0
togidemi's review against another edition
5.0
hey uh what the fuck
Listen, I know "lesbian necromancers in space" is such a meme to promote this book, but that alone already got me in its claws. However, gotta be honest - the start was kind of a slog for me, even when Muir's writing should've been just up my alley. (The people I know who've read this were divided about how... meme-y the prose sometimes gets. Guess which camp I fall into.) (Clown camp, motherfucker.) I can't quite pinpoint exactly why either, though I suspect it's because so many names - long-ass names like Harrowhark Nonagesimus - and weird worldbuilding got thrown at me at once in the first few chapters and I didn't really feel up to untangling them. It would've remained one of those books that I knew intellectually I would've liked, but didn't push on with, if I didn't have a friend to kind of indirectly egg me into continuing to read it. (Thanks a bunch, Leet.)
Sometimes some books just need time to completely wreck my life. (The best case would be me DNFing We Need to Talk about Kevin because I got so bored at the start; picked it up to give it the good ol' college try again and it DESTROYED ME for a solid week after finishing it.) I suppose this was the case with Gideon the Ninth as well. I was fighting myself to keep pushing through the intro and frankly the slog of the middle, but once happen and the book lowkey switches tracks to a murder mystery... BOY. BOYYYY. It took that long to get me to tell the people of each House apart, and then I really began to appreciate the worldbuilding.
A lot of the book's power, though, rests in the relationship of its protagonists. I never had complaints about Gideon and Harrow from the start, they were really, really solid characters since the beginning and quite frankly they kept me going during that period where I didn't feel super into the book. I really have to shout Gideon out for being the character who sounds so much like my own internal monologue, god. THIS is how you fucking write frenemies to lovers. I'm destroyed. I'm undone, my dudes. I would've liked to read other things before moving on to the sequel but not when this book ends like that.
TL;DR didn't quite like it even if i should have, but past a certain point it just got better and better and better and now i'm pasting five star stickers on it and tamsyn muir is somehow one of my favorite authors purely because her work just precision-targeted so many specific buttons in my brain???
Listen, I know "lesbian necromancers in space" is such a meme to promote this book, but that alone already got me in its claws. However, gotta be honest - the start was kind of a slog for me, even when Muir's writing should've been just up my alley. (The people I know who've read this were divided about how... meme-y the prose sometimes gets. Guess which camp I fall into.) (Clown camp, motherfucker.) I can't quite pinpoint exactly why either, though I suspect it's because so many names - long-ass names like Harrowhark Nonagesimus - and weird worldbuilding got thrown at me at once in the first few chapters and I didn't really feel up to untangling them. It would've remained one of those books that I knew intellectually I would've liked, but didn't push on with, if I didn't have a friend to kind of indirectly egg me into continuing to read it. (Thanks a bunch, Leet.)
Sometimes some books just need time to completely wreck my life. (The best case would be me DNFing We Need to Talk about Kevin because I got so bored at the start; picked it up to give it the good ol' college try again and it DESTROYED ME for a solid week after finishing it.) I suppose this was the case with Gideon the Ninth as well. I was fighting myself to keep pushing through the intro and frankly the slog of the middle, but once
Spoiler
the Fifth murdersA lot of the book's power, though, rests in the relationship of its protagonists. I never had complaints about Gideon and Harrow from the start, they were really, really solid characters since the beginning and quite frankly they kept me going during that period where I didn't feel super into the book. I really have to shout Gideon out for being the character who sounds so much like my own internal monologue, god. THIS is how you fucking write frenemies to lovers. I'm destroyed. I'm undone, my dudes. I would've liked to read other things before moving on to the sequel but not when this book ends like that.
TL;DR didn't quite like it even if i should have, but past a certain point it just got better and better and better and now i'm pasting five star stickers on it and tamsyn muir is somehow one of my favorite authors purely because her work just precision-targeted so many specific buttons in my brain???